Blog Posts about Breathless

1969 stands as the year that pop culture evolved from the mass grooviness of Woodstock and the far-out giant leap of the moon landing to the horror of the Manson Family murders and the Hells Angels stomping out flower power at Altamont.

It was also the year that Hollywood erupted with new creative freedom, emboldened by expanding societal mores and the new MPAA rating system.

Filmmakers could now dip into the palette of patently adult material, including coarse language, unflinching violence, and, most importantly, sex and nudity.

Let’s trip on back to 1969 and dig nine classic nude scenes from that headiest of daze gone by.

1. EASY RIDER
Toni Basil
(1:26)
Toni strips full-frontally nude in a New Orleans cemetery while tripping on LSD.

Easy Rider is indisputably one of the hippie era’s ultimate artistic statements. Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey!” video is one of the most indelible media images of the 1980s. How interesting that one cultural touchstone unwittingly begat another. On acid. Naked.

Waifish and wonderfully pert-boobied Jean Seberg, who wowed the world in the French new-wave milestone Breathless, tragically took her own life on this date in 1979.

The Iowa native became a skinternational sex symbol after portraying an American student who harbors a cop killer in director Jean-Luc Godard’s existential 1960 classic. She then starred in multiple arthouse films – some hits, many obscurities, a few with nifty nude scenes -- over the next two decades.

Mirroring the radical tendencies of her signature role, Jean supported the Black Panther party, which led to heavy interference in her life from the FBI. The political brouhaha ignited a firestorm of personal troubles for Jean that included multiple divorces, a miscarriage, and several suicide attempts.

Sadly, Jean was found dead on September 8, 1979 in the back seat of her car, holding a note that read “Forgive me. I can no longer live with my nerves."

We forgive you Jean. And we honor you today for never failing to leave us Breathless.